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The tools are not the same on every platform. That’s reason enough for me to not use it with my JavaScript projects. The bigger reason though is that it’s not
by hungerstrike 9y ago
The tools are not the same on every platform. That’s reason enough for me to not use it with my JavaScript projects.
The bigger reason though is that it’s not very idiomatic for JavaScript projects to use Make. It sounds like the only reason that some people go out of their way to use it is because they actually don’t want to learn something.
- dblotsky 9y ago> "The tools are not the same on every platform." Any common examples? > "It’s not very idiomatic for JavaScript projects to use Make." While I agree that popularity is a factor in picking a tool, it shouldn't be a deciding factor. Going by popularity is precisely how we end up with a new Build System of the Year(TM) every few years. The fact that we've gone through 4 fairly prominent tools (Gulp, Grunt, Broccoli, Webpack), all of which contending to "fix" the previous, and none of which have proper DAG or incremental builds (which Make has had for decades) is damning evidence. In other words, I think Make could be (and I wish it was) idiomatic for JS.
- hungerstrike 9y agoThis comment points out the kind of problems that can occur just on Unix systems - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485637 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16485637 And then there’s Windows... Anyway, the fact that things change quickly in JS-land is more of a testament to how popular it is than anything else IMO. If C were used in the same environments as JS, I’m sure that you'd see just as much churn.
- gonvaled 9y agoC is used in a lot of platforms. Js only in the browser (thankfully mostly converged) and in node.
- hungerstrike 9y agoJavaScript is in the server, browser, mobile apps, desktop apps and embedded devices. Basically, it’s used everywhere that C is used and then some.
- gonvaled 9y agoWhat is the runtime? Always the same. More than C? Ha! The platform where your js is running is probably written in C!
- hungerstrike 9y agoPffffft. Nobody wants to touch C these days. That's why many, many, many, many, many more people are writing server, browser, desktop and mobile apps with JS and not C.
- dblotsky 9y agohttps://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/ https://www.tiobe.com/tiobe-index/
- hungerstrike 9y agohttp://githut.info/ http://githut.info/
- dblotsky 9y agoThere's way more to software engineering than GitHub. Example: every company that hosts their own code repositories. The TIOBE index, while not entirely accurate either, does reflect usage by a much more broad set of engineers.
- hungerstrike 9y agoHere's another survey that shows what kinds of languages programmers actually want to use and JS tops the list while C comes in below even Bash/Shell programming and PHP.
- asveikau 9y agoYou can use gnu make on platforms where the usual make is not gnu. For example I install it from ports on *bsd and have an msys gnu make on Windows.
- gonvaled 9y agoWhat is the build tool used in the javascript world this week? Broccoli? Grunt? Gulp? Talp? Just dealing with breaking changes in any one of those is a full time job!
- hungerstrike 9y agoPro-tip: you don’t have to switch tools the minute that something new comes out.
- btbuildem 9y agoHaha yes you do, because your manager does, every time
- gonvaled 9y agoYou do, since different communities use different build tools. And they even switch tools, for the new kid on the block.
- hungerstrike 9y agoBullshit. You're arguing as if every JS developer has to interact with every JS community. Stop presenting these ridiculous false dichotomies.
- dblotsky 9y agoYou often do though. For example if you want to do open source development on JS projects, this means that you might have to learn many different build systems.
- hungerstrike 9y agoYeah, where “often” is defined as “this one example that I just conjured up”.